


What do we know?

by BaneKicksDavid



Series: College AU [1]
Category: Hey! Say! JUMP
Genre: #KeitosHardLife, #YamadasLifeIsAlsoHard, Alternate Universe - College/University, Gen, Ghosts, also chinen's fault, calculus is rough, crazy stuff happens at three am, it's all inoo's fault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-27
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-08-17 13:44:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8146195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BaneKicksDavid/pseuds/BaneKicksDavid
Summary: Nothing good happens when studying for finals at three am.





	

Yamada was positive if someone happened to walk in they’d believe a murder occurred. Papers scattered without a care, large textbooks covering every inch of table space that paper didn’t already occupy, and the lone body hunched over it all, trying to keep his mind focused on the blurring words. The murder of Yamada Ryosuke’s sanity was something he didn’t wish for anyone to witness at this late hour.

He should have listened to Yuto all those months ago. History and photography majors didn’t require a high-level math class, and it was the one opportunity they had to have a class together. It took the better part of two days, bickering over the scheduler and rearranging classes, before the lights shone down from heaven, opening the doors to an algebra class that fit with both of their majors.

It was a thing of beauty. After two long years they would finally meet in the classroom again instead of small lunch breaks between classes and weekends when neither of them made the journey home. They could goof off in class together just as they did in middle and high school. The two kings of all that were dorky could be together again.

But, as per usual, it was all Inoo’s fault.

Their friend group had all been comparing schedules, seeing when they could meet up for group dinners or small study sessions in the next semester, when Inoo had spoken up to give his input on Yamada and Yuto’s shared math class. 

“You should take Calculus 1,” Inoo said. “It’s super easy, and I know the professor who teaches it. They don’t give a lot of homework, and you’ll pass with an easy A.”

Yuto had politely declined, something about needing as much free time as possible to dedicate to developing his pictures. Yamada…

He wasn’t sure if it was the idea of a little homework or an easy GPA booster but something possessed him to drop his algebra class with Yuto in favor of the promises of Inoo’s words. Calculus? He’d beat the class just as Ancient Rome conquered Europe. If his friend had lived to survive and tell the tale, calculus couldn’t be that bad.

To put things simply, Yamada had vastly underestimated Inoo’s intelligence. The first class was a whirlwind of terminology whooshing over his head with every intake of breath from the professor. Derivatives? Sine? Tangents? Indefinite integrals? It was as if he walked into an advanced French class on accident and was expected to be fluent in ten seconds.

Inoo had apologized, of course. He forgot not all of his friends were as math literate as him when he made the silly recommendation and hadn’t expected Yamada to act on it. All of his promises of an easy class were subjective statements Yamada should have caught onto. No less than fifty math problems every night, a quiz before the start of every class, and the professor? An old man with a lisp that had Yamada wincing with every word he spoke.

He really should have dropped the class, or at least accepted Inoo’s invitation to tutor him, but there was something in the pit of Yamada’s heart that wouldn’t allow him to give in. His own greed and selfishness had put him in this position, and the strength of his own mind and determination would push him through.

To his friends, he must have looked insane, slaving over that hellish blue math book every instant that he could. He checked out every resource he could on calculus to explain the different functions and strange coded language this class spoke. Once, he even considered hiring a tutor in secret to decode the secret messages, but his pride held him back. 

A few concepts would stick here and there, but not enough for him to claim he knocked this class out of the park. Yamada was sitting on the fine line between a C- and a D+ and the mere thought of walking out of the class with anything lower than a C was driving him insane.

The song of the latest hit pop song began blasting out of his phone’s speakers. He jumped to turn that cursed alarm off, nearly knocking his chair over. The screen gently glowing, announcing it was three a.m. and there was a mere six hours before he would face his maker. 

He ran a hand through his messy brown hair, getting a whiff of something stale that made him choke on his own breath. He couldn’t remember the last time he had showered. The last week had been a blur of formulas and mathematical laws that regular life was on the sidelines. Yamada had been lucky his other classes only needed minimal studying in order for him to pass, so this behemoth of a test could occupy his time.

Every time Yamada looked at the pages of his notes, his vision swam and each formula merged into the next. He needed a break. Badly. If he didn’t look at something that wasn’t a mathematical equation for a few minutes he could push back his mental breakdown a few more hours to memorize one or two more concepts for the test. With those, he could only pray he would pass the final.

The door to the study room clicked open, and a lone figure backed his way into the room, closing the door as softly as it had been opened. Yamada couldn’t tell much from his appearance, but the guy was clutching his backpack tightly to his chest, his body almost vibrating in the florescent lights.

“Uh, can I help you?”

Like a deer caught in headlights, the other man froze, his head inching to look in Yamada’s general direction before the muscles in his shoulders and faced relaxed.

“Thank god,” he sighed. “I thought you were one of them.”

Yamada knew he needed a break, but he didn’t need it in the form of another wacked out college student attempting to survive final exams. He’d rather go back to his dorm room and sleep then listen to the ramblings of another student so late at night. The more the other guy stood there, the more tempting the option to give up and sleep became.

“I need a favor. Can you-”

“Nope." 

Yep, sleep sounded nice now. Anything to get away would be fine.

“But you didn’t even hear my favor first.”

Yamada had to hand it to him. The guy was adorable when he pouted, even if he wouldn’t lessen his grip on that stupid backpack for a moment. He had to look away, scramble some papers together or something to keep from getting pulled into those sad eyes and convinced to continue to converation.

“Where are you going?” the other guy asked.

Fuck, did this guy never shut up? 

“Home,” Yamada muttered. “I have a funeral to attend tomorrow.” 

“Ah, sorry to hear.” 

There were a few books he was going to keep. He’d sleep for a few hours before waking up to cram as much information as he could into his head before the final. It’d be better than heading into it with no sleep at all.

“Do you mind me asking who died?” he asked. 

“No one important,” Yamada said. “Just my GPA.”

“I can understand,” the other guy said after a moment. “Calculus is hard, and Iwanishi isn’t the best teacher. How have you been doing so far in his class?”

It only took a moment for Yamada to realize he recognized this stranger, wishing he could mentally punch himself for not noticing it early. For an entire semester he had tried to stifle his laughter whenever this kid, Okamoto, would mistakenly answer a question in English and confuse the entire class with the abrupt change in language.

In calculus, he would often interject random English phrases before turning red and stuttering an apology. The boys behind Yamada would often joke in hushed whispers that Okamoto didn’t understand basic Japanese. But who could really blame him? Rumor was Okamoto grew up in England as a kid and even recently returned from a whole year abroad as well.

As far as Yamada was aware, Okamoto was doing fairly well in class and didn’t appear to be struggling whenever the teacher called on him for answers. Besides his difficulty separating the two languages he spoke, he was quite brilliant in mathematics. This late at night before the exam he should have been sound asleep in his bed.

“Um, Yamada-san, are you okay?" 

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just tired is all,” he said, continuing to pack and sort the books he was going to bring with him. “What are you doing here, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“My roommate is trying to give me a heart attack,” Okamoto said. He finally let go of his backpack, placing it by the door and started picking up the scraps of paper Yamada had long ago scattered across the floor. “He knows I don’t like scary stories and started reading some to me as I was studying for the exam tomorrow. I couldn’t sleep and came here only to find…”

“To find?”

“You’re not going to believe me,” Okamoto sighed, “but I saw a ghost.”

“A ghost?”

A haunting didn’t make sense. The library wasn’t on any old ancestral lands and no one had committed suicide there since it was built. There was nothing in its past or present that would tie a spirit to it at all. Yamada had already looked into rumored haunted spots on the campus year ago.

“I knew you wouldn’t believe me,” he said, pouting. “But I swear I saw one. It was all white and shining and it’s trying to haunt the bathroom.”

“Then just avoid the bathroom then it won’t steal your soul,” Yamada said

“But I have to go there.” Okamoto frowned. “But I don’t want it to steal my soul. I like my soul. My mom says I have a nice one.”

“Listen, the only reason you should have to go to the bathroom is if you have to pee or something. No one has to go there just because.” Yamada should have known when Okamoto didn’t immediately respond. “You’re joking." 

“Yamada-san, please. You’re the only one here and I can’t go by myself.”

“It’s not that hard,” Yamada huffed. “You walk into the bathroom, unzip your pants and-”

“I know how to pee,” Okamoto frowned, “but there’s no way I can battle a ghost all by myself and live. You said it yourself! They can steal my soul.”

“I was joking!” Yamada said.

Oh, fuck. There they were again. Okamoto had to know those puppy dog eyes were a lethal weapon. He wasn’t the straightest person on the planet, but the helpless energy Okamoto was oozing was hard to resist, especially in combination with those sad brown eyes. 

Who could say no to Okamoto when he looked this pitiful? After all, he only needed to go to the bathroom. 

“Fine,” Yamada relented, “but I need some sort of payment in return, and I’m not getting in the stall while you pee. 

Yamada was sure if you put a picture of Christmas lights next to Okamoto’s face, the guy would be shinning brighter then any light display. He was willing to be money on that and quite a lot.

“I have the perfect idea,” Okamoto said. He ripped open the zipper of his back, shifting through many files before extracting a carefully stapled stack of lined notebook paper. “My calculus study guide. My friend took the class last semester and complied all of the formulas and laws that will be on the final. I don’t really need it anymore, but you could use it to cram before the final tomorrow?" 

It was the holy grail of payments. Instead of spending time on hundreds of useless concepts he’d never use again, this single study guide would help him cram the information he needed to know.

“Alright,” Yamada said, dropping the few things he had back onto the table. “Let’s get this over with.”

To say Okamoto clung to him would be an understatement. He had latched his fingers around Yamada’s bicep the minute they stepped out of the study room, gripping tight as if he wished their skin to merge into one human being. His breath tickling Yamada’s ear as Okamoto stayed as close to him as he could.

He had to keep reminding himself what was a stake every time Okamoto would bump into him or step on his heel his a little too hard. His only saving grace at a decent grade on his final was waiting for him upon their return to the bathroom.

“Can’t you feel that?” Okamoto whispered. 

“What?”  
  
“This floor is haunted. We’re going to die." 

“We’re not going to die,” Yamada said. He kicked open the bathroom door. “This building isn’t-”

They stopped in their tracks, transfixed by the floating white blob by the urinals that shimmered under the fluorescent lighting of the boy’s bathroom.

They looked at each other before looking back at the ghost and screamed.

* * *

 “What you’re saying is you were late for my exam because you were held for questioning by campus police?”

“I have a copy of the police report as well,” Yamada said, tapping the folder he had laid on his professor’s desk.

It had all been a series of unfortunate events. No ghosts had been wandering the halls of the library that early in the morning, only a lone cleaning staff employee who thought the building was a little chilly for her liking. She had been walking around with a blanket clutched around her person, and Okamoto had mistaken her figure in his exhaustion as a ghost.

She had moved onto cleaning the boy’s bathroom when Yamada and Okamoto kicked their way in, startling her when they screamed. She beat them away with her broom as she called security on her phone, and police officers had subdued then not even ten minutes later.

It had taken hours to convince campus security that, no, they didn’t attack the poor woman. No, they weren’t on any drugs, and, no, they only thought the woman was a ghost only because of how sleep deprived both of them were. When they were finally released, the calculus final was long over and they spent another hour tracking down their professor to explain their tale.

“I find this hard to believe given the outlandish nature of the tale,” Iwanishi said, “but I will allow both of you one more opportunity to complete the final. Tomorrow at 8 am. Do not be late.”

When they were safely outside, Yamada and Okamoto looked at each other and couldn’t help but burst out laughing.

“Chinen isn’t going to believe this when I tell him about it later,” Okamoto said, wiping the tears from his eyes. "This is too crazy, Yamada-san."

“Neither are my friends.” Yamada grinned. “And you don't have to keep calling me 'Yamada-san.' Most people just call me Yama-chan.”

“You can call me Keito,” Okamoto said. “Do you want to grab lunch or something?”

“Yeah, only if you’re paying.”

He laughed before running off in the direction of the dinning hall, not waiting to hear Keito’s response. He had a few more hours of sanity before he’d need to hit the books again, studying his ass off but this time, maybe, just maybe, Yamada would let a friend help out.


End file.
